The Artists in Residence Program is an individually tailored, development-based residency for early career performing artists of all disciplines to explore a project in house at Ars Nova over the course of a season. The residency is a unique opportunity for artists who develop work in non-traditional ways to make use of Ars Nova’s customized, flexible support to discover new things about their project and process, and to build community and peer relationships with artists across genres in the residency cohort.
Anna Jastrzembski is a New York City and Santa Fe-based playwright, lyricist, and transmedia artist. Her plays have been seen at The Cherry Lane Theatre, Signature Theatre, The New Ohio, and Joe’s Pub in New York City. She has developed work at the Sewanee Writers Conference, The New Musicals Lab at Christopher Newport University, Drama Club Camp in Maine, and as a fellow with Stowe Story Labs. Anna is also a member of the SOUR MILK experimental performance collective. Their work has been developed or produced with The Exponential Festival, The NYU Production Lab, and The Tank. MFA: Columbia University, Playwriting 2019. BFA: Hamilton College, 2014.
Carsen Joenk is a director and sound designer. She is the co-artistic director of Rat Queen Theatre Company and a founding member of Sour Milk (DIRT, Traffic). Carsen has been a Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow, Mercury Store Directing Fellow, Roundabout Directors’ Group Member, Wingspace Directing Mentee, OSF FAIR awardee, New Georges Jam Member, and NAMT Directing Observer. She is also the co-creator of Miss Atomic Power and Jerusalem, FL (2024 + 2025 National Playwright Conference finalists). Carsen has developed and presented work with Ars Nova, Lincoln Center, New Georges, Nantucket Performing Arts Center, Clubbed Thumb, NYTW, Colt Coeur, Rattlestick, Exponential Festival, Fresh Ground Pepper, EST, Gingold Theatrical Group, Ice Factory/New Ohio, Ugly Face, and more. www.carsen-joenk.com
Ying Ying Li was born in Beijing and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She came to America to attend Yale Law School and practiced corporate law in NYC for approximately 10,000 billable hours before restarting her life as a writer and performer. Recent opportunities: artistic residency at the cell (2025-26); artistic residency at Colt Coeur (2024-25); 2050 artistic fellowship at NYTW (2023-24); and The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group (2020-23). Full-length plays include This Could Be You (Spotlight Series at The Public, NYTW workshop), Dance Moms (Marin Theatre production, Colt Coeur workshop, Premiere Play Festival semi-finalist, NEA grant recipient), and the solo show But Today I am Fine (The Venturous Play List 2025-27, Arkansas New Play Festival 2026, Queens Theatre New Voices Festival 2026). Her work has also been developed or seen at TheatreSquared, The Tank, Project Y, Boomerang Theatre, The Brick, and on The Highline (so many helicopters, lesson learned). An alum of the sketch comedy group, Hot Buffet, her humor writing and videos have appeared in publications such as the NYT, Buzzfeed, Wired, MSN, Lifehacker, Men’s Health, and Mental Floss. She has two small delicious children.
Felicia Lobo is a director and musician whose genre-defying work confronts our greatest fears with a punk-rock sensibility. She is the 2026 Drama League Special Projects Directing Fellow. Recent directing credits include Everyone’s Seen My Tits (Edinburgh Fringe; Rolling Stone UK 5-star pick), Technocelibites (ALAB Theatre Festival), Wood Demon (East Village Basement), & Snow Dance (East Village Basement). She has developed new work with playwrights at New York Stage and Film, The Brick, Judson Church, The Tank, Pipeline Theatre, Parsnip Ship, and The Flea. She currently serves as the resident director at New Orange Theatre Company. As a musician, she is the frontwoman of Brooklyn punk band QWAM and writes music for film and commercials. BFA: NYU Tisch. MA: Educational Theatre, CCNY. Colt Coeur Company Member. SDC Associate Member. felicialobo.com
Janelle McDermoth (she/her) is a multi-platform creator from The Bronx, New York and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. Broadway: A Bronx Tale. National Tour: HAIR. Off Broadway: The Fires (Obie Award), We’re Gonna Die (Lortel Nomination, Antonyo Nomination, Outer Critics Circle Honor), The Chronicles of Cardigan and Khente, Soul Doctor. Film: Caught Stealing, To All The Boys: Always and Forever, Daughter of the Bride. TV: “Law & Order: SVU”, “Blue Bloods”, “Blindspot”, “High Maintenance”. Janelle’s original solo show, Gemini Behavior, has been presented by Ars Nova and Pipeline Theatre Company in their inaugural New Works Accelerator. She has also been the voice over and narration talent for numerous national commercial campaigns as well as documentary shorts for ESPN and Hulu and is a featured artist on Folklore by Caracas Trio, 2026 Latin GRAMMY Nominee for Best Jazz Album.
Sam Mueller [they|she] is an American artist whose work revels in the sensory experience of being alive, often at the intersection of music and extreme physicality. Sam’s play At The Confluence of Creeks was developed in residency at the Ucross Foundation in northern Wyoming and most recently as part of MCC’s Judith Champion Playlabs (dir. Jess McLeod). Their full-length play PIN. was workshopped and presented as a part of Round House Theater’s National Capital New Play Festival and the Terrence McNally Fellowship at Rattlestick Theater (dir. Caitlin Sullivan). Other full-lengths include Laced (About Face Theater, world premiere dir. Lexi Saunders) and 70.3 (developed with Parity Productions and The Hearth Theater). Both Laced and 70.3 are available through Broadway Play Publishing.
Their short play Suck the Stone Fruit Dry was presented as part of the 2025 Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival. Other short plays include Keep Your Heart Alive (EST/NY) and ‘what will you do with your one wild and precious life and whatever else that mary oliver poem that keeps getting shared on instagram says (maximalism in a crawl space)’ (The Glory, London and EST/NY).
Sam has been a four-time finalist for The O’Neill’s National Playwright Conference and a semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award. They have also been the recipient of an EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant. Sam is an alum of Youngblood, The New Harmony Project, Under Construction @ The Road Theater (LA), and Life Jacket Theater’s Writers Room. They are currently an artist-in-residence at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theater. Sam is proudly represented by Michael Finkle at WME. BS: Northwestern University (Playwriting and English Literature)
Andrés Sánchez is a Mexican-American clown performing as México’s Minister of Culture, Andrés del Globo, who shares his most beautiful cultural findings from around the world using balloon art. His work is a sincere exploration of world cultures through the eyes of a dandified fool who values beauty, joy, and being the most sophisticated man you’ve ever met. His full-length show ANDRÉS DEL GLOBO GOES GLOBAL was recently featured as part of the New York City Clown Festival at Brooklyn Art Haus. He has also performed at The Elysian Theater, FRIGID New York, Brooklyn Comedy Collective, Uncommon Comedy Festival, WHIN Fest, and The Idiot’s Hour. He is currently collaborating with Soft Brain Theatre Company to build their inaugural physical theatre workshop, Mask Hysteria. He has trained at Accademia dell’Arte in Italy and Dell’Arte International in California. Besides performing, he has been active in political canvassing for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign and served as a Field Lead for Darializa Avila-Chevalier’s congressional campaign. He studied Linguistics at UC Berkeley and now works in healthcare as a Data Scientist.
Christina Tang (she/her) is a theater maker, lighting designer, and creative technologist based in Queens, NY. She experiments at the intersection of theater, games, food, and humor to explore themes of power and agency within public infrastructure and hidden systems.
As a lighting designer, she is a frequent collaborator on new works of theater and dance. Her work has been seen in bars, basements, yards, and theaters in NYC, across the US, and internationally in the UK, Cuba, South Korea, and Romania. Recent design credits include Meat Suit (2ST), The Mutables (Kat Mustatea), and Psychic Self Defense (Normandy Sherwood). She is currently working in interactive installation as a lighting designer for Meow Wolf.
As one-third of SOUR MILK, whose work spans FEAST (a hypertext fiction game), TRAFFIC and DIRT (works of playable theater), and BIRTHDAY (a work-in-progress project for dinner parties), she leads concept, game, and software design in the role colloquially known as Big Nerd.
She is the recipient of the Exponential Festivals’ inaugural artist commission for the upcoming 2027 season, and was a 2025-2026 post-doctoral fellow at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where she holds her MPS. Her work has been supported by NYSCA, NYFA, and the Queens Art Fund. christinaftang.com // sourmilk.xyz
MTHR TRSA is a multidisciplinary artist working across visual art and performance. She is the founder and director of Hole Pics, a queer performance series currently based at Judson Memorial Church. The series has become an experimental platform for boundary pushing performance, foregrounding risk, irreverence, and queer communion. Recent projects include the original performance work I DON’T THINK THAT WAS MOLLY, presented at CPR – Center for Performance Research under the curation of Alessandra Gomez; HIGH AND SCARED presented at Performance Space New York in 2025 and then again at Ars Nova in 2026; and co-directed EXAM by Buffy at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. Across these works, MTHR TRSA continues to interrogate spectacle, risk, and the porous boundaries between chaos and control. In 2025, she was awarded the Rauschenberg Foundation Dancer Grants Program and received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, recognizing the urgency and impact of her evolving practice.
2025-2026: Jason Aguirre & Adam J. Rineer; Aneesa Folds; abigail jean-baptiste; AriDy Nox; Emerson Mae Smith, Murphy Taylor Smith & Mack Brown
Since its founding in 2002, Ars Nova has hosted a variety of developmental programs for artists. For information on those programs and the participating artists, please check out our Artistic Development Programs Archive page.
Alumni of our multi-disciplinary development programs include Annie Baker; Michael Breslin & Patrick Foley; Shayok Misha Chowdhury; John Early; Michael R. Jackson; Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins; raja feather kelly; Carly Mensch; Elizabeth Meriwether; Lin-Manuel Miranda; Isaac Oliver; Celine Song; Shaina Taub; Whitney White, and many more exciting folks lighting up stages and screens around the globe.
The open application period for the Artists in Residence Program is currently closed. Check back in spring 2027 for details on how to apply to the next cohort.
This residency can accommodate individuals, duos, or trios collaborating on a project.
This residency is open to early career generative artists of all types in the performing arts. This could include—but is not limited to—playwrights, composers, devisers, curators, comedians, clowns, choreographers, and directors. Are you a generative artist who doesn’t yet have a name for what you do? We’d love to meet you!
Projects that are either new or in early stages of development will benefit most from the resources offered in this residency.
You should explore this program! This year, we are putting our energy into a program that connects artists working in all mediums rather than siloing them into separate programs. The Artists in Residence Program will support all the same genres of art-making that Play Group, CAMP, Vision Residency, and Maker’s Lab supported. And ideally, its flexible nature will make room for artists who might not have found a home in any of those programs!
We’re always looking for partners to support our development programs! Learn more by reaching out to Megh Cooper, Philanthropy Director, at mcooper@arsnovanyc.com.
